


Beyond

by starksborn



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Destroy Ending, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5043373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starksborn/pseuds/starksborn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of a renegade Shepard as he wakes up after destroying the Reapers, and comes to grips with just how much he lost during the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Freedom

     Quite frankly, a full scale Reaper invasion was the best thing to happen to him in a long time. Sure, Earth was burning, Palaven was on the verge of being lost and people of all species were dying in droves. It was a genocide, a massacre of everything organic. The entire galaxy was officially at war, panicked, and with all terrified eyes on Shepard. 

      With his ship and his crew back, his Spectre status reinstated and explicit orders to unite the Council races by any means necessary, he was at the top of his game. He had more power now than he'd ever had at any other point in his career, more power than he ever thought he'd achieve without first earning the title of _Admiral_.  


     Despite this, he never imagined the final call would be up to him. He didn't think even in his most vivid  _fantasies_ that the power of life and death over both synthetics  _and_ organics would be his decision. The only chance to end this war and to end the cycle of destruction set forth by the Reapers, and the power to play  _god_ , if there ever were such a thing was right before him.  


     All he had to do was  _choose._   
  
  


     The Catalyst was looking up at him, almost observing him as he stood hunched over, gripping his side and struggling to breathe. His armor, or what was  _left_ of it was the only thing keeping him  _together_ at this point. Whatever that beam was that the Reapers connected from Earth to the Citadel, he can't shake the feeling organics were  _not_ meant to just  _dive into it_ head first.  


     Well, what's that saying about  _living_ and  _learning_ ?  


     "Your options are laid out in front of you," the Catalyst said, breaking his train of thought and continuing to stare up at him. "You must choose, and quickly, or else the harvest will continue."  


     Shepard cast another look at the paths before him.  


     The Illusive man had been right, in a sense, and controlling the Reapers  _was_ possible. Even if the price was the destruction of  _himself_ in the process, the amount of power that could be had from controlling the Reapers was almost unfathomable. It's no wonder the Illusive Man went mad in the end, trying to chase down and harness something he could never truly master. The temptation to follow in his footsteps, to be able to do what he tried and failed at, to be able to have all that power and  _know_ he outsmarted that bastard was tempting. It was almost too tempting to resist, and he felt himself take half a step forward before stopping.  


     His sense returned to him, what bit of it he ever did have and what managed to survive the chaos of this fucking war, the Eden Prime beacon and  _suffocating_ to death out in deep space.  


     He turned away from the option to control and limped a few steps in the other direction, pistol hanging from his hand at his side. 

     "I didn't come all this way to watch the Reapers live," he said. Power or no power, the Reapers had to die. Choosing to do anything but destroy them felt too much like making everything that had happened to get here be in vain. A lot of people made  _sacrifices_ for this, and he  _forced_ a lot of them into making those sacrifices. He backed many people into corners and left them no other options but the ones he  _wanted_ them to take, and in some cases he simply made the decision for them in the form of a bullet to the back.  


     Shepard was told  _any means necessary_ and he made  _damn sure_ he used and stretched those guidelines as  _far_ as he could. For years he was the only one who truly understood the threat that was coming, and when everyone else finally fell in line, he wasn't going to let anyone stop him from doing what needed to be done.  


     The least he could do in an attempt to  _honor_ those decisions is make sure the Reapers didn't get to walk away from this.  


     The Catalyst watched him impassively for a moment, turning on the spot and gazing at him he limped away.  


     "You are aware of the consequences of this action?" it asked. "Are you truly ready to handle this?" Shepard stopped, turning back around and looking over his shoulder with a crooked, bloody grin.  


     "I already  _know_ how this book is written," he said, and turned away from the Catalyst one last time. He knew how this book was written all right, and it ended with the Reapers being blasted into tiny, little pieces.  


     The Catalyst opened its mouth to speak, perhaps give him one final warning, but he'd already put the AI on ignore to focus on aiming the gun in his hand. His arms felt stiff with the motion, and the pistol seemed to weigh far more than it had at the beginning of this war. Far more than it had all that time ago, back on the Normandy SR1. Back before anyone knew what was coming, before he had all this  _weight_ on his shoulders.  


     He fired once, twice, fingers constricting on the trigger until the thermal clip gave out and the weapon was burning in his hand.  


     Luckily, it was enough.  


     Something in front of him shattered, then exploded. There was a flash of white, blinding in it's brightness--  


     --and then nothing.

     And nothing.

     And  _nothing_ still.

     And then, finally, came the  _pain._   


     It was how he knew he was still alive. The dead don't  _feel_ , and they certainly don't feel pain like he was feeling.  


     It paralyzed him, left him laying under a pile of rubble and struggling to get even the smallest amount of air into his lungs. He was wheezing on the exhale and something was a making a  _whistling_ noise every time he inhaled, but he couldn't place the source or the why. There was so much pain he couldn't focus on localizing  _any_ of it; it was all one big, searing  _burn_ . His mind was like mush, and his reactions to everything were coming slower and slower.  


     Ever since Cerberus brought him back the last time it always seemed like his thoughts had processed faster, but now? Now he could barely focus on staying awake, much less figuring out how bad his injuries were.  


     He didn't know how he was going to get out of this one, or even if he  _should_ .  


     The pain was keeping him so still he started to think maybe he'd never move again. Maybe something severed a nerve or a bone in the right way, maybe there's a piece of rubble sticking into him at the right angle and this was finally the end. Under this dark mound of the remains of the Citadel, there was no way of telling how much time was ticking by. He tried to focus on breathing, as he lay there listening to his own lungs collapse and the feel of his internal organs bleeding out one slow trickle at a time.  


     He knew he should be trying to do  _something_ , but when the thoughts finally managed to work through his sluggish brain and surface enough to try and  _think_ about, they seemed foreign to him. Like holding a map upside down, or trying to listen to an alien without a translator. You  _know_ you're seeing and hearing something  _important_ , but you just can't put all the pieces together.  


     So was this it?  


     After everything, this was finally how he was gonna go out?  _This_ was going to be the death that  _stuck_ with him?  


     All he'd done for the galaxy and he couldn't even get a painless death. He tried to laugh at the thought, but the pain shooting through his abdomen and chest quickly stopped that idea.  


     It made sense though. He  _wouldn't_ get the joy of a painless death, would he?  


     No, not him. Not the Mindior survivor.  


     Not after Torfan, not after callously gunning down the colonists on Feros. Not after the death of the Rachni queen on Noveria. Not after all the people he walked into hell through the Omega 4 relay and left behind to  _rot_ .  


     Not after what he did to the genophage.  


     He had to admit it, if only to himself while shrouded in darkness, that he didn't deserve a painless death. He was reaping what he sowed, and trying not to choke on the irony of it. This was where it was going to end, trapped in this rubble and making the ultimate sacrifice for the rest of the galaxy. He was going to die in the pitch dark and without even knowing which way was up. At least, he supposed, this wasn't a choice that was being forced upon him. At least no one held a gun to his back and told him what to do. In the long run, his own fate was still kinder than those he'd given to others.  


     The thought of his tampering of the genophage made him think of Eve, and he flashed back to that day he'd spoken with her in the medbay of the Normandy. When she'd told him her story of her initiation to be a Shaman, about being trapped in darkness and left to rot, and how she'd managed to get out.  


     " _I started digging in the wrong direction._ "  


     He felt his heart skip a beat and for a long moment he forgot how to breathe though all the pain when he realized that he was still alive, after all and if he was still alive he could still  _fight._ He could  _dig_ his way out of this even if he ended up dying in the process. He wasn't going to be found like this, laying on his back in the dark like a dog that just rolled over and gave up.  


     He started to put all his energy into the little things, forcing his addled brain to get with the program and to take stock of himself. Could he move his fingers? It took a while, but he could feel them twitching somewhere next to him. He noticed with a sudden bolt of panic he could only feel the fingers on his right hand, and being unable to examine his left to see what the problem was, he decided to ignore it and move on.  


     Next were his toes, could he wiggle them?  


     The feeling of his toes shifting inside his boots told him yes, and he blinked in the darkness and started to try to pull one of his legs up. He was laying at an awkward angle, and if he could just manage to get his legs under him, to shift his weight and maybe get to his feet or roll onto his stomach...  


     He worked through the pain shooting up into his shoulders and raised his arms as much as he could, feeling his surroundings with his good hand in the dark while trying to get his bearings. The rubble above him landed just right, catching two large slabs of metal and concrete and forming a sort of tent above him. It hadn't crushed him into nothing yet, but it was unstable enough that the threat of collapse was looming. That in itself was motivation to get moving, wasting away from injuries was bad enough but Shepard had no desire to be flattened to death.  


     It took what felt like ages to simply roll over onto his stomach, and the act of doing so made whatever parts of his body weren't already hurting join in with the rest of him. Pulling himself forward worsened the feeling and he couldn't bite back the scream from it. His throat felt raw and scratchy and the screaming triggered another coughing fit that stopped him for a while. When the coughing finally died down, he braced himself and crawled forward again. He ground his teeth together until it felt like he cracked them and kept moving until he hit a wall and was forced to a stop.  


_Dig_ , he thought, as images of Eve still lingered in his mind.  


     He pressed his fingers to the concrete, feeling and grasping and searching for anything to take hold of. He dug in as deep as he could and started pulling, tearing away at whatever he could pry loose. Slowly he started making space, and slower still he started to move forward. He kept telling himself over and over to just  _dig_ , to just keep going no matter how much he wanted to stop. He was terrified if he paused to take a break, he'd lose the energy and the momentum to continue on.  


     It was a strange feeling, to have died in one life and been brought back to another, and to find himself so close to death yet again and so  _desperate_ to get away from it. He'd always been rather apathetic about his first death and he didn't remember much about it. After all, he  _died_ and there wasn't much he could do about that fact. It was easier to just accept it and move on. Though, he  _had_ been annoyed, maybe even  _disgusted_ and definitely  _offended_ upon learning the details of his resurrection. He was annoyed that Cerberus couldn't just leave him alone, and offended that both Miranda and the Illusive Man thought he  _owed_ them something for reviving him. As if he'd been the one begging to be brought back to life, to have his torn up body retrieved and stuffed into a lab and turned into a glorified science experiment.  


     To be on the precipice yet again, to be staring that void right in the face once more and to be literally clawing a path away from it seemed so strange. Maybe it was some sort of  _human_ thing, some sort of wiring in our brains that made us cling to life even in such extreme situations.  


     The instinctive need to survive made him think more about Eve and her stories, and about the Krogan as a whole. How Wrex hadn't given up on curing the genophage, and how Mordin had fought to his last breath to follow through with his promise.  


     It was then that the first true seeds of guilt planted themselves in Shepard's stomach. He'd been justifying what he did by reminding himself of his orders, of  _any means necessary_ , but now it seemed almost vile.  


     The Krogan were doomed, soon they would all die out and the entire race would be extinct. The Krogan would be talked of as the Rachni before them, and the Protheans before them. Of an old, long lived race that lingered only in textbooks and faded memories and if Shepard managed to make it through this war, his name would be clear of any ties to their destruction. The failing of the cure would be blamed on a technical mishap, a problem with the shroud. Something no one could have saw coming or prevented, and he'd made sure of that when he shot Mordin. He made sure of it when Wrex confronted him on the Citadel and he sent him to his death for his trouble.  


     All his career it seemed like he spent a lot of time putting effort into covering his own tracks. Hiding his dirty deeds behind others, behind excuses or behind his title as a Spectre. His favorite hiding place as of late was those three little words he kept repeating to himself since he left Earth. He said them so much they almost became a  _prayer_ of sorts. He thought of them when he woke up, he thought of them before he slept. He thought of them on Tuchanka, he thought of them when he watched Wrex's body fall through the glass in the docking bay.  


_Any means necessary._   


     With the words fresh in his mind once again, he reached out and continued to dig. Pulling himself forward with one arm and clawing at bits of the Citadel with the other, it was agonizing and methodical work. Eventually, just when he started to feel the end nipping at his back and sinking into his bones, fresh air brushed against his face and he found himself crawling through a hole and out of the smothering darkness he'd woken in. He managed to suck in a deep breath in spite of the pain and gently rolled onto his back.  


     As he stared up at the remains of the Citadel, he realized he'd fallen down into one of the ruined Wards. The inner circle where the Catalyst had been activated was mostly gone, but more importantly than that, so were the  _Reapers_ . He stared up at the sky, and for the first time in what felt like a  _lifetime_ , he was able to see it without that mechanical threat tainting the horizon.  


     The realization that he'd  _done it_ , that he'd  _succeeded_ in finally destroying the Reapers and  _ending_ this war sent a jolt of elation through him. The entire war, it'd seemed, had started all the way back on Eden Prime. Now here he was, able to gaze up at the stars without feeling an intense sense of  _panic_ about what was to come. It was a nice feeling, even with as banged up and close to death as he was. In spite of it all, he felt  _lighter_ .  


     Maybe even  _free_ . 

 

 


	2. Confinement

     “ _Shepard!_ ”   


_The second to last thing he remembered hearing before everything went black all those years ago was Joker's panicked voice. The absolute last thing was the sound of his oxygen hose popping loose, and the_ whooshing _noise the air made as it was sucked out of his helmet and into deep space. Terror formed quickly in the pit of his stomach and leapt into his throat as he tried vainly to suck in breath. His fingers clawed at the armor around his neck in an effort to fight against something he couldn't stop. He suddenly couldn't help thinking about Saren, oddly enough, and his words about how organics will stupidly fight to the end, even if they know they're going to die regardless.  
_

_Bastard was right.  
_

_His visioned blurred and darkness started creeping in on the edges, and he could feel a chill settling into his armor. The cold embrace of death, he thought, making itself comfortable and at home before his heart even had time to stop.  
_

_He doesn't remember what happened next, and he had no idea how long it took him to finally suffocate. The only thing that stands out, the one thing that he can recall with striking clarity is the panic.  
_

_The panic, and the feeling of his chest caving in.  
_

     The line between vivid nightmares and reality is one that had been getting harder and harder to distinguish the longer the Reaper war went on. The dream about his first death shot Shepard's vital signs off the scales, and the sound of multiple pieces of equipment beeping and wailing was enough to bring a team of nurses into his hospital room with a quickness. It's the noise that woke him up more so than the dream, and for a moment he found himself blinded by bright overhead lights and confused by all the voices and sounds of people huddling around him.

     The disorientation set in quickly and threatened to send him into another panic. He tried to say something, _anything_ to get someone's attention to answer some of the questions already forming in the back of his mind, but his voice refused to cooperate with him. The inability to speak succeeded in doing what the disorientation couldn't, and his vitals shot back up as another wave of panic crashed over him.   


     “God damn it!” one of the nurses snapped. “Someone get more sedative in here, his blood pressure is out of control!”  


     The scene had an almost uncanny resemblance to the first time he woke up on the Cerberus station while being rebuilt, and he could almost  _feel_ his heart skip a beat. All he could think was  _no_ , no more sedatives. Don't make him go back to  _sleep_ , don't put him back into the  _darkness_ . He tried to protest, tried to tell them not to give him any more drugs. He was fully prepared to  _beg_ if he had too, but still his voice managed to elude him. He watched as a nurse added something to one of his IV's and within seconds the heavy, sleepy feeling of some sort of sedative was coursing through him, and he was as powerless to stop it as he'd been during the Lazarus Project.   


     He had no way of knowing how much time passed between that incident and when he next woke. At least his second attempt at regaining some sort of awareness went a lot more smoothly than the first. His immediate thoughts were of the Lazarus Project, and for a while he just kept his eyes closed and wished himself back to sleep. He didn't want to know what happened to him after the Citadel. He hadn't expected to live through it, and crawling out of the wreckage was without a doubt the most painful thing he'd endured thus far. Whatever anyone could have done to save him had to be similar to what Cerberus did, and he wasn't sure he could wake up and go through that again. The thought of how many  _years_ might have passed between that moment when he was almost  _blissfully_ staring up at a Reaper-free sky, and waking up in a hospital bed filled him with dread, and despite himself he could feel tears welling up in his eyes.  


     The sound of a door hissing open was enough to pry him from those thoughts and finally he opened his eyes. He blinked a few times in the light, noticing it was much dimmer than the last time his eyes were open. He took a moment to take in what he could of his surroundings. His room was small and sparse with polished steel walls. There was a window next to the bed, and beyond it the ruined city-scape of...London?  


     “Oh, goddess,” someone breathed. Shepard blinked again and turned his head to look at the source of the voice. A nurse had entered the room, and she stood a few feet away from the bed, staring at him with wide eyes and a hand over her chest. “You're  _awake_ .”   


     For a moment he said nothing, waiting to see if she was going to continue. When she didn't, he blinked a few more times and tried to see if his voice was with him this time.   


     “ _Yes_ ,” he managed. His throat was dry, and speaking caused a tickle down in the back of it that only succeeded in triggering a coughing fit. The nurse moved to his side and reached down to press a button on the side of the bed. The back of it started rising, folding until he was in a sitting position and from the way the motion managed to tug painfully at, well,  _everything_ he figured that wasn't a good sign about his overall health.   


     His discomfort must have been obvious on his face, for the nurse stopped what she was doing and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder.  


     “You're okay,” she said, trying her best to offer a comforting smile. She wasn't very good at masking the shock and concern filling her eyes, and the gesture left Shepard feeling even  _worse_ . “You've been asleep for a while.”   


     “How--” the word triggered more coughing, and the nurse urged him to rest for the time being.  


     “Let me get you some water,” she said. “Just wait here.” She backed away and out of the room with haste, and missed the way Shepard narrowed his eyes at her back. He didn't know where he was, how long he'd been here, or in what condition his health was, and he was pretty certain he wasn't able to get out of bed no matter  _how much_ he wanted too.   


     He very  _clearly_ wasn't  _going anywhere_ .   


     The nurse returned carrying a tray with a pitcher of water and a cup, and made her way around the side of his bed to set it down. She poured half a cup of water and held it up so he could take a sip, and he tried to shift in the bed to lean forward and take it, and was stopped by a muscle spasm in his back and shooting pains in his left arm. He hissed at it, falling back deeper into the mattress of the bed, and she reached out to pat his shoulder again.  


     “Don't try to do anything,” she said, holding the cup out for him and letting him drink before setting it back down. “I'm sure you have questions, don't you?”   
Shepard nodded at her, and tried to start _asking_ those questions. He triggered yet another coughing fit when he tried to speak, and decided to just give up on doing that for now. Coughing felt like it was tearing his lungs out of his chest and the muscle out of his back.   


     “Well, let's see,” she said. “You're in London, for starters. You are obviously still alive. The Reapers are gone...”   


     He already knew that he'd succeeded in destroying the Reapers, but even still it was nice to have outside confirmation of that. It was nice to know that entire feeling of seeing the sky void of the bastards wasn't just some near-death hallucination. Shepard managed to smile at that, and was pleased to discover that at least his  _face_ didn't hurt when he moved it.   


     The nurse continued to speak, going down a list of answers to questions she was assuming he had. She told him the Citadel was holding up surprisingly well with all things considered, and that the Mass Relays had been damaged in the blast from the Crucible. The varied military forces of the galaxy were still trying to sort through the injured and the dead left behind in the now-abandoned theaters of war that the Reapers had opened, and so far Cerberus had yet to rear its ugly head again. She mentioned that a lot of tech had been damaged in the Crucible pulse, and that as a result as lot of people were having to get adjusted to using more antiquated ways of living.   


     “It's not so bad, really,” she said. “We're making repairs on the daily, and it shouldn't bee too much longer before everything is like it was. When we first found you it was pretty bad, and the doctors had to unfortunately make do with what was available to them while operating on you.”  


     That gave Shepard pause, and his eyes narrowed again.   


     “Unfortunately?” he asked, voice still hoarse. The nurse seemed to realize what she said, and her eyes widened for a second before she turned her gaze from him.   


     “I'm...I'm not sure I should tell you, Commander,” she said, wringing her hands and still staring down at the bedside table. “Perhaps you should wait on the doctor.”   


     “ _Tell me_ ,” he said, grinding his teeth and managing to hiss the words out despite the feeling in the back of his throat. The nurse looked up at him and away and continued to wring her hands before turning her gaze back on him and dropping her arms down by her sides.   


     “It's...” she paused, taking a deep breath. “I'm afraid you were in very bad condition when a Salarian excavation team found you. You barely had a pulse, and there was no telling how much blood you lost...”  


     The longer the nurse talked, the more nauseated Shepard became, and the more he regretted asking her about his condition. Part of him wanted to scream at her to stop, to  _leave_ or even to just dope him up again and send him reeling back into that endless black expanse that was so like the one he died in.   


     She told him in all the gory details about what they had to do to  _save him_ , and promised him it was only with his  _best interest_ in mind. All he could think was that once again he'd landed in a position where a third party was doing things to his body without his consent, all in the name of  _saving him_ , or even  _bettering him_ .   


     His right arm was gone. They took it from the shoulder down, she said. It'd been infected probably during his time in the rubble, and the surgeons didn't think there was any time to try and clear it up before it spread to the rest of the body. His right arm, she told him, was only the  _first_ limb they removed.   


     His right leg was gone as well, and for the same reasons. They didn't think it was infected when they found him, but in the process of moving him out of the rubble of the Citadel and to a field hospital, and the time it took for them to get him evacced to an  _actual_ hospital, and then  _finally_ moved to London, it was so rife with infection they didn't dare to leave it attached to the rest of him.   


     His left leg was gone from the knee down. It had been  _fine_ , aside from being  _mangled_ to hell and broken in about all the places a leg can  _be_ broken. But, the nurse told him, something went  _awry_ after the bones were set, and infection popped up within days. She said they tried to treat it first, that they “did what they could, Commander”, but in the end there wasn't anything to be done. The lack of proper medical equipment was blamed. The pulse from the Citadel had devastated a lot of the robotics used in surgeries, and so soon after it happening they hadn't had time to fix most of it.   


     The nurse finally stopped talking, standing somber at his bed side with her hands folded in front of her, and watching him closely as he stared down into his lap. A long moment of silence passed before he looked up again, and he didn't even care about the tears threatening to spill over.   


     “Anything else?” he asked, his voice hoarse both from disuse and now, anguish.   


     “Actually, yes,” she said. Her voice was soft now, so  _soft_ and light and so full of genuine  _regret_ at having to  _tell him_ all of this. She reached down and pulled the blanket on top of him back a little, taking his remaining hand carefully and holding it in hers. “We're not sure  _what happened_ to your three fingers on your left hand, but they were gone when the Salarians found you.”  


     Shepard gazed down at what was left of his hand, examining the nubs just after his first knuckles where his index, middle and ring ringers used to be. All that was left were his pinkie and thumb, and the lack of any other fingers served to render his only remaining extremity utterly  _useless_ for doing much of  _anything_ .   


     He couldn't stop the tears from coming any longer, and he didn't even bother to try at this point. Marine bravado be damned, what  _other_ reaction was there to finding out you crawled out of a war and woke up as  _literally_ less of the man you were before it started?  


     The nurse gripped his hand gently, but firmly, and dared to lean over and embrace him. She reached an arm around him and rubbed circles on his back, and Shepard couldn't help resting his head on her shoulder.   


     “I am so,  _so sorry_ , Commander,” she said. “I know that doesn't do much, but you've done  _so much_ for all of us. I'm so sorry you couldn't wake up to better news.”   


     She kept her arm around him for a long moment, and Shepard found he was grateful for it. He'd spent so long in the past few years shutting things out to focus on the  _mission_ that it felt like he'd been forced to just stop  _feeling_ all together. Being able to sit and just let things  _out_ for once, and in the presence of someone who wasn't going to judge him or think less of him for it, was something he truly needed. He never felt right getting  _emotional_ around his crew, not when he was in a leadership position, and especially not when he'd put so much effort into building a reputation as being the most  _ruthless_ but  _effective_ motherfucker this side of the Omega 4 relay.  


     Ever since Eden Prime, and Saren with his  _goddamned Geth_ , Shepard felt like he'd ceased to be a real  _person_ . Once the threat of the Reapers became known, and everyone settled the weight of the  _galaxy_ on his shoulders, he felt like his name stopped having any  _meaning_ to people unless it was preceded with  _Commander_ or  _Spectre_ . Over the course of the war, he rose to become a  _hero_ , a goddamn  _icon_ while at the same time managing to lose sight of who he was before that.   


     People got it in their heads that Shepard could do anything, beat any odds. Dying and being brought back didn't help this idea, and every time he shot down a Reaper and saved a colony or even an entire  _planet_ the idea of the great  _Commander Shepard_ grew even still.  


     At the time, he'd soaked it all in. Being regarded as some invincible superhero had its  _perks_ , after all. The near unlimited resources from Cerberus, the added power from his Spectre status and the willingness at the end of it all from both the Alliance and the Council to give him free reign and let him do as he saw fit was incredible. When he thought back on it, the feeling was very much like a kind of  _high_ . He was almost drunk with power, and with his mind set solely on destroying the Reapers, he didn't put much thought into the negatives of the entire situation.   


     He didn't bother trying to  _remember_ who he was before Eden Prime, and he didn't  _care_ . He didn't need to know what kind of a person he was without all the  _titles_ and the  _fame_ and the  _power;_ not with a war to be fought. The galaxy didn't need who he was before the Prothean Beacon, or who he was before leaving Kaidan to die on Virmire. They needed who he'd become, the person who had learned to make the hard decisions and keep on trucking.   


     Waking up in a hospital and finding out the condition of his body served to bring him  _down_ from that high. The realization that the war was  _over_ and the Reapers were  _gone_ and that never again would the galaxy face that kind of threat effectively stripped him of all his  _usefulness_ in a way, and he knew that from this point on his  _titles_ would hold no weight and have no  _meaning_ . He was minus his power, he was minus his status, and to top everything off, he was minus the ability to  _walk_ or  _get out of bed_ .   


     He was a shell of his old self, and without a grand, life-saving mission to focus on, he was left with the sobering reality of his situation.   


     If he could have screamed without it choking himself, he would have. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shepard's not doin' so hot, is he?

**Author's Note:**

> Let me be clear on this: Eddie Shepard is decidedly not a good person. There's a reason his recovery is going to be so hard, and that he's going to suffer so much through it.


End file.
